SciFi interviews Robert Pattinson

Is it true that you and [director] Catherine Hardwicke knew immediately from his audition that Robert was the right guy to play Edward?

Stewart: Not to discredit anyone who came in to read for the part, and I wish I had a more articulate way to put it, but Robert came in and he wasn't just playing the strikingly handsome vampire. Deep down, I could see the pain in him. And he looked at me for real. He wasn't just auditioning. He was present. He was there. We could see each other. That's what needs to be in the movie.

Robert Pattinson, you'd not read the books prior to becoming involved with Twilight, and you had no way of knowing that even as you shot the film it was emerging as a phenomenon. How strange has it been to be in the eye of the storm?

Pattinson: It gets stranger and stranger every day, at the moment. I was literally completely and utterly ignorant until the last day of shooting of what it really was. Even the budget didn't reflect that kind of phenomenon that it is now. It wasn't that kind of $200 million budget movie. It was a relatively low-budget thing. So I literally had no idea it would get this kind of attention.

Why are so many people so passionate about Twilight?

Pattinson: I think that for a lot of the fans of the book it's become a kind of cult now that they like defending. Other young people want to join it because they feel like they're missing out on something. I think it's a rolling stone gathering more and more people with it. I don't know for sure. I can't really tell you. What I always thought about it when I read the book was that it seemed like Stephenie Meyer completely believed that she was Bella, and so in a lot of ways, when you're reading it, it seems uncomfortably voyeuristic, like you're reading somebody's fantasy. And after meeting Stephenie Meyer it's absolutely not the case. But I really, really thought, when I was going to meet Stephenie, that it was going to be a very strange experience, with her thinking that I was a character. I think that's one of the reasons, that it's just such an intimate thing that people can really belong to. It's just one these rare things that everybody wants to have a piece of.

What do you remember of your audition with Kristen Stewart?

Pattinson: I didn't even know I was doing a reading when I went into the audition. So I went in thinking one thing, and then Kristen was already there and she had already done readings with tons of other people. As well as doing this performance, which I really wasn't expecting, she was also a little bit jaded. I think she'd done about 10 readings that day. I was kind of intimidated by what she was doing. I was stunned because it was so different from what I was expecting. And I guess it never really changed the whole way through, which kind of works, just in terms of the story, me having to be the powerful one but being intimidated by her. The relationship built from that. It was always a struggle for me to say things to her in scenes. Everything seemed sort of strained and, weirdly enough, it came out looking right. Almost from day one there was just something which worked, but it was a completely unorthodox way of going at it. We really weren't trying to act like we were really in love with each other right from the beginning. It was more about trying to intimidate each other and showing how much we didn't care about the other person, which I guess worked. In a lot of ways that's how long-lasting relationships work.

How pleased are you with the finished film?

Pattinson: I liked what [screenwriter] Melissa Rosenberg has done, which is make it a much more actiony-based film, but [she] managed to keep in a lot of the intimacy as well. It's a really good adaptation. Virtually every scene I did was with Kristen, and I really liked working with her, so I hope that translates. I never watch my stuff, so I don't know. But I really tried to go out of my way to make it not another cash-in on one of these teen-novel adaptations, which I think even 6-year-old children are sick of and know the only reason are being made is for money. I thought the core of Twilight could really be made into an interesting film, and I tried to do it as honestly as I could and as seriously as I could. And I hope it turns out all right.

A sequel based on the second book, New Moon, is already in preproduction. What from that book are you eager to see on screen?

Pattinson: New Moon, out of the series, was my favorite one, though Edward is hardly in it. But I tried to set up a performance which would last the three movies without me getting bored of it. He becomes such a different character in the later stories, and I love that, and tried to allude to that in the performance in this one. He's kind of snappy, and there's a buried anger underneath this whole layer of being a gentleman. There's frustration and just a lot of self-loathing, which I liked about the character. I like that in the second one he's literally suicidal. Seeing this perfect being be totally suicidal will be very interesting to play.

I've posted all the "Rob related" parts and you can read Kristen's answers to other questions HERE.